President and CEO Boston Arts Academy Foundation

Chairperson of the Board of Trustees, Fontbonne Academy

“Fiercely Committed to Equity, Inclusion and Raising Revenue to advance the Public Good.”

Denella J. Clark is a proud Jamaican immigrant and Boston resident with more than 30 years of experience managing nonprofits in the arts education, academic medicine, youth development, and human services sectors. She also has significant experience with public policy and legislation, specifically related to women and people of color. She is recognized as a transformative and respected leader in diversity, philanthropy, faith, youth, and women’s issues, and she prides herself on living a purposeful life. Ms. Clark believes strongly that all young people should be given the opportunities they deserve to live the life they imagine. 

President and CEO, Boston Arts Academy Foundation

• Leads non-profit organization that secures essential private funding for the Boston Arts Academy, the city’s only public high school for the visual and performing arts. The school is dedicated to a vocational education in which an arts degree will support innovation, artificial intelligence, and creative art content in the workforce. Eighty-four percent of the school’s 510 students identify as Black or Latinx, most students come from families with low-incomes, and many become first-generation college graduates. For ten consecutive years, 97% of graduating students who applied to college have been accepted. More than 1,700 of Boston Arts Academy’s diverse and talented alumni are innovating and leading in a variety of careers in Greater Boston and beyond.
• Successfully led the BAAF’s Building Our Future campaign, which raised more than $35 million over the last six years to fund facility and programming improvements, including a new multimedia education center and a state-of-the-industry studio and soundstage.
• Introduced the now-signature fundraising event “Honors” (described as a Kennedy Center-type annual awards program) to celebrate all areas of performing arts.

Chairperson, Board of Trustees, Fontbonne, The Early College of Boston

• Provides leadership and governance for Catholic preparatory school serving young women in grades 7-12 throughout Greater Boston and the South Shore. 

Other Leadership Roles

• Launched the Pastor Pearline James LOVIN’ Gestures Fund, honoring the life and ministry of her late mother, and worked with the City of Boston to dedicate Malta Street in Mattapan as “Pastor Pearline B. James Way.”
• Co-Chairperson of Louis D. Brown Peace Institute’s $25 million Campaign for Peace.
• Helped lead Joslin Diabetes Center’s $100 million capital campaign.
• Led Dimock Center’s $25 million campaign.
• Member, former Mayor Martin Walsh’s City of Boston Racial Equity Committee.
• Member, Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women.
• Lifetime member, NAACP.  

Most Proud Of…

Of her many titles, the one of which Ms. Clark is proudest is Mommy-in-Chief… She is the proud mother of a son and daughter, an avid reader, a world traveler, a political junkie, and a fashion lover.